


If a Flower Blooms in a Dark Room

by starlabsforever



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Near Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlabsforever/pseuds/starlabsforever
Summary: A few months after her return to Team Flash, Caitlin has mostly earned back the trust and respect she'd previously lost. Cisco just wishes they could figure out how to be friends again, too.





	If a Flower Blooms in a Dark Room

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt, "You're not okay."

Cisco flinched and pulled away. “Your hands are so cold.”

“That’s the point.” Caitlin grabbed his arm and pressed her fingers against the wound. “Stop moving. I haven’t stopped the bleeding yet, and if you keep moving, you’re going to lose even more blood.”

He stared at his arm, fascinated and a little awed as ribbons of frost spiraled from Caitlin’s fingertips and across his skin. He’d gotten in an ugly tangle with a metahuman, but his real foe turned out to be the barbed wire fence behind them. Twenty minutes ago, his arm had been lacerated almost to the bone. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it- he tried once and almost passed out -but he had known from the frequency of Caitlin’s concerned tuts that it had been ugly. Now, it was still bleeding, but it was a much shallower cut. His skin was healing before his eyes.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” Caitlin apologized. She tilted her head down and a clump of hair fell in front of her eyes. She dyed it constantly, but it always faded away within a couple of weeks. Currently, it was the lightest shade of strawberry blonde, somewhere in between her natural hair color and her frosty shade. In addition to the dye jobs, she wore a lot of foundation and dark lipstick these days.

“Hey, it’s cool.” She shot him an exasperated glance through the curtain of her hair. He held a hand up. “No pun intended, I swear.”

“Sorry,” she said again, more quietly. She glanced down at the wound at his arm, scrutinizing it. “How does it feel?”

“Cold?”

“Ha.” She pressed her fingers against the edge of the cut. “You have to tell me if it gets too cold. I’m trying to prevent nerve damage, not cause it.”

“It’s not too cold,” Cisco assured her. It felt kind of relaxing to have her cold fingers against his inflamed, stinging skin. If he laid down on that cot, he could almost fall asleep, but Caitlin would make him get right back up. “You have to admit, this is pretty sweet. The whole regenerative energy deal. It’s like you’re a time lord or something.”

“Or something.” Caitlin studied the wound. “I don’t think I could cut my own hand off and grow it back, though. That’s scientifically improbable.”

His heart pattered a little. “You remember that episode?”

“Of course,” she said primly. “I went evil, I’m not an amnesiac.”

“No, yeah. I just didn’t know that you ever paid attention while we watched Doctor Who.”

She rolled her eyes, but her lips were curling in a tiny smile. “It was important to you, so I watched it.”

That made him want to cry, just a little. It was so easy to pretend that this strange, reserved woman who seemed to live in her lab was different than his best friend of half a decade, but things like this reminded him that she was still in there, somewhere, part of her. Things had gotten better since Caitlin’s return to the team four months ago. Iris could actually stand to be in the same room as Caitlin. They’d removed the temperature sensors in the cortex. There was so much less tension whenever Caitlin was in the room, because even though the team had been wary, they hadn’t realized until she came back how much they’d really needed her.

Even with all that, he still didn’t know how to talk to her. He missed her so much. He wanted to be friends again, but he wasn’t sure how.

He realized that she’d pulled her hand back from his arm. “What are you doing?”

“I need to slow down the process.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t want to give you frostbite.”  

“It’s gonna take longer now, isn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a baby when you get hurt.” That made him smile. She used to tell him that all the time, but she never stopped patching him up or taking care of him when he was sick.

“It hurts and the cold thing feels weird.” She glanced at him sharply. “Not too cold, I promise. It’s just not a sensation I’m used to.” Across the room, the clock glowed 1:47 AM. He covered a yawn and Caitlin noticed, because she was only inches away from him, sitting in the chair beside the cot.

“Don’t fall asleep,” she warned. He knew that she was worried that he might not wake up. She’d only done this a few times, and they were still trying to figure out all the kinks of how it worked. “I know you’re tired, and I’m sorry.”

“Nah, s’ok. You’re tired too.”

“I’m okay.”

“Bull,” he said. “I know you don’t sleep. Maybe I should be the one taking care of you.” 

She huffed a little. “You’re not okay, either. I hear you whimper in your sleep when you nap in the break room.” He looked away. “No-one expects you to be fine. You lost two people that you cared about.”

“So did you,” he said firmly. Caitlin liked to disassociate herself from the team, from anything that had happened before she’d gone full meta. He took every opportunity he could to remind her that those feelings still belonged to her if she wanted them. It was a work in progress.

She stared at him. “I guess we can agree we’re both a bit of a mess.”

“I’m a lot better than I was thirty minutes ago,” he said brightly, in an attempt to diffuse the tension.

She nodded and almost smiled. “That’s true.”

Her half-smile didn’t escape his notice, and he tried to hide his grin. It was just… Caitlin, focused and composed while frost billowed from her hands in gentle clouds. She’d fallen back into her regular rhythm of being the doctor, patching up him and Wally and Cynthia, but he knew she was dissatisfied. This was the third time she’d used her regenerative powers to heal him- the first time had been on accident while she’d been giving him stitches -and he could already see something changing.

She was looking at him warily. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing.” She raised her eyebrows. “It’s just that you’ve been using your powers voluntarily for like thirty minutes. That’s a far cry from where you were before…” Before everything changed. That felt like millennia ago. “I don’t think you ever considered that you could use these for good, and here you are, healing me.”

She tilted her head and the light reflected off of her smooth, shiny hair. “Of course I am,” she said evenly. “I wasn’t going to let you bleed out.”

“No, but you could have just given me stitches,” he pointed out. “It makes me happy to see you doing this, and not just because I hate needles. I want to see you happy.”

Caitlin stared back at him pensively, and then inhaled. “I’m not afraid of myself anymore. I’m still wary, because I know what I’ve done and what I’m capable of, but I’m not afraid. I got bored of that.” She glanced down at his arm. “That looks better.”

He looked down too. The skin where his wound had been was tinged pink, but healed.

“You’re a miracle worker,” he said. She smiled softly. She had something in her eyes that he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. “Glowing” was too strong of an adjective, but she looked just a little warmer, a little stronger.

He laid down on the cot and pressed his head against the pillow. Mistake, because now he didn’t want to stand up. He watched as Caitlin bustled around the medbay, cleaning up bloody gauze from earlier. She paused to tie her hair back in a loose knot. This particular shade of failed auburn hair dye kind of suited her, even under the awful fluorescent light.

“You could help a lot of people like this,” he commented.

“Maybe I will,” she replied, and then smiled at him wryly. “I don’t see where I’d have time, though, taking care of you every night. You should start picking your fights away from barbed wire.”  

“I will if you start patrolling with me,” he said, and then held his breath. That was a risky topic.

She paused. “Don’t push it,” she said, but she was smiling softly. That smile could make flowers bloom, freezing temperatures be damned.

“I’m just going to crash here, if that’s okay.” He stretched his legs out across the cot and rolled onto his side. “Dead tired, and you didn’t use your healing magic on my banged-up legs.” Tonight had not been one of his finer nights.

“Okay.” Caitlin stood in the middle of a room for a moment, and then slid back into the chair beside him. “I’ll stay here.”

“Hey, I’m okay.” He shoved her knee lightly. “You should go get some sleep.”

She shook her head. “I want to be with you.”

“I know you do, who wouldn’t?” She snorted. “But there’s another cot over there, you weirdo. Go lay down.”

“Fine.” She stood up and went over to the wall to flick the light switch off. “I’m not going to be the one to explain this to your girlfriend.” 

He smiled, listening to the springs creak as Caitlin laid down. She’d lost her sense of humor a while ago, but it was making reappearances. 

“Good night,” he called out into the dark.

“Go to sleep,” was the reply. Despite the chill that typically occupied any room Caitlin was in, the room felt warmer than it had in months.


End file.
